Ammonia instead of Lye in an A/B extraction

[waitingfortheworms]

Would it be possible to use ammonia instead of NaOH in an acid base extraction? Swim would imagine it would because as far as swim knows the only purpose of the lye is to basify the cactus solution allowing the alkaloids to be extracted easier by the xylene. If that were the case then in Swims theory using ammonia would do the job only less efficiently considering it has a slightly less ph. Would a higher ammonia-water ratio and or more extractions make up for that? Or is there something Swim is unaware of that would render ammonia useless or extremely inefficient in this extraction? Swim apologizes if this is a stupid question for his knowledge of chemistry is pretty basic.